The man with the tank bigger than mine paid with a hundred for “Twenty-five on number two”. The guy behind the bulletproof glass held the hundred up to the light to see if it was real. When the change came back, the man held a twenty up to the light to see if IT was real… then smiled.

I had a conversation with a friend the other day. For as long as I’ve known them, we’ve had these conversations, like if you were talking with someone over the same perpetually hot, never empty coffee for weeks at a time.

The kind of conversation with no beginning or end.

And at some point, each of us talked about emptiness. About the feeling of having nothing left inside ourselves to give to others, because we have nothing left inside ourselves for us.

The friend told me about the times I was there for them but, for whatever reason, had forgotten.

Then the friend told me this…

“Bill, you are not empty.”

I wanted to argue, but I’m smarter than that. Barely. So I wrote this note to myself, instead.

I lost a child. You lost a parent. She lost a spouse. He lost a limb. We lose what we lose, and when it’s lost, it is gone. Not misplaced.

Not missing like car keys to be found five minutes later next to the half-and-half in the fridge.

But missing like one minute you’re saying “Good morning”, “Goodnight”, “See you soon”, and the next, you’re never saying it again, except to a ghost.

This is grief, unless it’s not your child, your parent, your spouse, or your limb. Then, it’s an excuse, a personal problem, a character flaw. And it isn’t even that your grief doesn’t belong to you, it’s that you don’t belong to your grief.

You are disenfranchised.

From your pain. From your love. From your god-granted human experience. From all of it.

You are disenfranchised.

She lost a best friend? Get over it. He lost a girlfriend? Get over it. They lost a reason to get out of bed in the morning? Get the fuck over it.

When our right to grieve is denied us, except within the boxes others say must be checked. When all love is love, but not all grief is grief. When pain and mourning require blood kin for legitimacy. And when the dignity to recover, as we are, is questioned, we are disenfranchised.

And if you wonder why this story has no end, it is because, like an end to grief, there isn’t one. Because like you, like me, like he, like she, it, and we, remain disenfranchised.

I don’t know why. I don’t know when. But there are days that, after a rush of accomplishment, there is a vacuum created inside of me. It’s almost a physical property, like when a low pressure system moves into a geographic location, and soon after, the real weather moves in. Dark clouds, heavy with rain. Wind. Thunder. Lightning. You can taste it.

Sometimes, the hair on your arms even stands up.

I feel this.

(and by the way, I hate it)

I’m feeling it right now.

And just like the weather, I never know what emotion will blow in when the low pressure system comes. Today, it’s sadness. But let’s be clear, today it’s ONLY sadness. Not depression like the depression that came last summer. That was a fucking weather Armageddon. That was purple-black funnel clouds, with cows spinning inside them. This is just sadness. Like on another day, it’s just anger, or another day, it’s fear, anticipation, or even joy.

Today, it’s sadness. And I’m writing my way through it. It’s how I learned to cope, last summer. And I’m coping right now. Hell, I’m even writing a blog post and not matchbook poetry, which was about all I could do in 2017. Matchbook poetry. Poetry so short, it could fit on the cover of a matchbook. Yeah, it’s a thing. Anyway, if you’ve read the first five posts in this series, and shame on you if you haven’t… I’m laughing as I write that… you know that I’m okay, and you are not to call the authorities when you read shit like “sadness”, “anger”, or “weather Armageddon” in a sentence. You also know that, while I have spent the last decade writing poetry that would make Mary Poppins cry, I still believe in the better ending.

And that I believe all these feelings, these feelings that are as common to everyone as they are to me, are just a part of the earthscape that I’ve been put here to describe, in words that are insufficient. Which is why I try, every day. Because maybe, if I try, every day, better words will appear than “sadness” and “anger”. And you will read them, and know that you are not alone.

Writing is something I never thought I would do. In the dedication of my first book, I thanked the junior college English teacher who actually, briefly, encouraged me in the notes of turned-in poetry and prose assignments for her composition class.

Then I did nothing with words for another 25 years.

With what’s left of this morning, I’ll be writing.

Writer’s block is my friend. The reason I’m a poet is because of a horrible case of writer’s block about 10 years ago. I thought I was on my way to being an internet-famous journalist, back when there was such a thing. I wrote for a site, now long gone, and after a few years of doing that, I simply ran out of words. Looking back, I’m pretty sure what I ran out of was bullshit. At least that one particular vein of bullshit I had been mining for hits and likes on that site. Given how small the pond, for a time, I was a pretty big fish in it, and the idea that I would just run out of ideas was something I wasn’t ready for. I don’t think anyone is ever really ready for a lie to catch up to them. The truth was, I wasn’t cut out for that kind of writing. Deadlines and promises and the responsibilities of a byline had sucked all the clever right out of me. When I sat down in front of the screen to write, all that was left was a head full of feelings, and a string of incomplete sentences to describe them.

So after a while, I did just that. I wrote in short sentences. I used small words. And before I wrote, I felt. Because these were no longer word counts, they were what counts. I sucked at it, but the what counts started bleeding out of me. My writing changed, and eventually, I changed. A little. I’m still changing.

Except for the process of how I write poetry. I still do that the way I did when I was a wannabe, writer’s blocked journalist. On a computer. It wasn’t until the last year of scribbling in a journal (see the earlier post, Hour 2, for that story) that I could write anything poetic other than by typing.

My last holdover from those bad old days.

So in this hour, after what feels like a whole day has already passed, I write. It’s a loose habit now. Less about discipline and more about need. I’ve written three books this way so far. Not out of responsibility, but out of desperation. All those years ago, when the words stopped coming, it was because there was something more important than words on the way to replace them. A lifetime of thoughts and feelings, love and pain, and the need to translate them into a language I had never known before.

I have a stupid high metabolism. Always have. Hypoglycemic high, even. It was inherited. Hungry sneaks up on me like a kitchen ninja, who sneaks up on you while you’re staring into the fridge. A really boring ninja.

Food is always boring. Boring like that ninja in your kitchen.

Unless I’m actually hungry, because… hypoglycemia. Except on THIS day, I haven’t been to the grocery store for 5 days past when all the food I want to eat is gone.

When I’m hungry, food becomes almost exciting. Not like most people… okay, people who aren’t me… think of as exciting. Not like 5-Star dining with a whisky bar the size of the closed end of the LA Coliseum exciting. More like, I have a can of refried black beans with jalapenos, a 6 month old frozen slice of beef brisket, 2 eggs, a jar of salsa past its expiration date, and a few street taco sized corn tortillas, exciting.

Kinda like the ‘I’m hungry and can’t go anywhere’ version of Food Network’s Chopped. I become competitive with myself. The-contestant-judging-himself kind of competitive. Where the only win at the end of the game is, did I like it enough to eat it. On this day, I did. And, a little secret, I’m getting good at making my own pan fried tostadas.

Apologies to all my Keto brothers and sisters.

So, since you can’t all eat my homemade desperation cooking, here’s a bonus picture. Sorry if I’m too hungry to talk about it, anymore. And now that I’ve eaten, let’s see what kind of trouble I can get into for Hour 5.

I tell myself that it’s important to do that. When I was at my deep darkest, it was first reading… not writing… that turned my face to the light again.

As a child, I was reading on my own before the chairs got warm in kindergarten, but like anything an undisciplined child accomplishes too soon, that child takes it for granted, and if left to wander too long on this path, that child loses his way. At least this child did.

As an adult, it turns out, the ones I love the most, read the most. It wasn’t that I set out to reclaim my lost path by finding and loving those who read, it just worked out that way. Like Guy Montag in Fahrenheit 451, maybe readers just found me. To hear of their love of this thing I took for granted from childhood made me curious to know them, and this love that filled them up. Without meaning to, they showed me the empty inside myself. They spoke of reading like a person in love speaks of their special someone, corporeal, as real to them as the touch of another human being. Of a love that fills their soul.

And I needed to fill my soul.

I read now. Remedially. Not because my comprehension or vocabulary is stunted, but because the muscles in my brain that should be running reading marathons are atrophied, like someone waking from a coma, and falling on the way to the bathroom.

I read now. Slowly. Chewing on every word, often aloud, to let the taste and weight of every word satisfy me. I get filled up so easily, and it hurts to take it all inside, so some days it’s all I can do to read a few lines before I have to stop and digest what new thing I just took in. Some days it’s poetry, others, classic fiction. But most days, it’s something I’ve never tasted before, and I chew on it like a baby chews on that first bite of peas or blueberries. Cautiously, curiously, the way someone who lived life without friends makes friends for the first time.